Acting director of Unicef ??Belgium dismissed after accusations on Twitter

The interim director of Unicef ??Belgium, who has been in the job for only a week, was temporarily removed from office on Sunday, the organization's president, Eddy Boutmans, said in a statement.

Messages posted on Twitter brought heavy charges against the replacement, claiming he was involved - as a former treasurer of the Hacer Puente association - in a case of fraudulent adoptions in Guatemala.

"After reading some of the messages on Twitter that make heavy accusations against the acting director of Unicef ??Belgium, Bernard Sintobin, the president has asked Mr Sintobin to withdraw temporarily" for the time that clarity is made on these accusations. "The president is personally convinced that Bernard Sintobin is in good faith and is not involved in fraudulent adoptions," said Unicef ??Belgium in a statement.

An open investigation

An attempt to remove a baby from a teenage mother at Hawke's Bay Hospital last week needs to be investigated independently, a health board member says.

The hospital was put into lockdown after a stand-off between midwives, social workers and police, as they tried to take a newborn baby from its 19-year-old mother due to family violence concerns.

The baby was eventually allowed to remain with its mother under a care plan originally put together by her midwives and wh?nau.

Hawke's Bay District Health Board member Jacoby Poulain said she was concerned about how the incident was handled by all agencies.

Ms Poulain said she believed the hospital failed in its duty of care to look after the young mother.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: An in-depth study about the adopted children in the state since 1990 has revealed that 42% of the parents who adopted the children have not disclosed to their children that they are adopted children. The hesitance to reveal the truth generates mainly from the fear that the child may search for their biological roots and they may not accept the adopted parents.

The study, conducted as a joint initiative of the department of women and child development and Rajagiri College of Social Sciences (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Rajagiri-College-of-Social-Sciences), also revealed that 31% of the children who have come to know about their adopted status, have expressed keenness in finding their biological parents, while the remaining 69% had no such desire.

The study was conducted by handing over a questionnaire to adopted parents and children across the state, and then analysing the response using a statistical analysis software. The study has been prepared on the basis of response from 462 parents and 90 children who have adopted and who are adopted, respectively. The study found that the number of adoptions in the state has been on the rise, and more than 6,400 children have been adopted in the state since 1990.

While half of the parents did not reveal the truth to the children, 93% of the children responded that they are aware of their adopted status. Half of those among who know their adopted status (49%) have come to know the truth from their adopted mother, 36% from their adopted father and the remaining 15% from other relatives, peers and friends.

The majority of (91%) adopted parents have stated that they are proud about the fact that they are adopted parents and 68% of them had no problems with their adopted children. Though the minority, 32% said that they faced some problems with their adopted children. Among these, the highest number said that the children were disobedient (21%), hyperactive (17%), stubborn (16%), performed poorly in academics (13%), were in the habit of lying (11%), were lazy (8%), aggressive and had learning disability (5%) and had stealing tendencies (3%).

Abandoned as a newborn, all Abigail Prangs ever wanted was to know who her biological mum was — what she found out instead was heartbreaking.

An Australian woman has uncovered a shocking family secret while searching for her biological mother in Zimbabwe.

36 years ago Abigail Prangs was taken from Harare Hospital, driven four kilometres and abandoned in bush near the Magambuzi River.

“I was dumped outside of the hospital, I was just literally wrapped in a towel, with my cord cut,” Ms Prangs told Sunday Night True Stories.

“Someone in that hospital has done something and, for some reason, has dumped me.”

2Bernard Sintobin, CEO ad interim van Unicef België.

RV Bernard Sintobin, CEO ad interim van Unicef België.

Unicef België ontslaat directeur definitief na beschuldigingen over adoptiefraude: “Geen andere keuze”

Het ontslag van de kersverse interim-directeur van Unicef België, Bernard Sintobin, was nodig gezien de aard van de beschuldigingen tegen hem. Dat heeft de voorzitter van Unicef België, Eddy Boutmans, gezegd op een persconferentie. Sintobin komt voor in een onderzoek van het federaal parket naar het verhandelen van kinderen uit Guatemala. Sintobin zelf is van plan klacht in te dienen wegens “laster en eerroof” tegen onbekenden.

HAA 13 mei 2019 16u45 Bron: Belga

The process to adopt a child internationally and bring them back to Canada.

Features

Find quick and direct answers to your questions about adoption, including how to adopt, the fees involved, and how long the process will take.

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Find out how to take good Canadian passport photos for toddlers.

Holly V. Hays Indianapolis Star

Published 8:28 AM EDT May 13, 2019

Kim Gantt was nervous.

In March, the Bloomington woman flew 17 hours from Indianapolis to Seoul, South Korea, to see if the people she’d been chatting with online could answer decades-old questions about her identity.

Will I recognize them? Will they recognize me? Will they like me?

After barely a week: Unicef ??boss takes a step aside after judicial investigation of child trafficking

UNICEF, the children's rights organization of the United Nations, has a problem. A judicial investigation is being conducted into a non-profit organization in which Bernard Sintobin, the new CEO-ad-interim for Unicef ??Belgium, has been active for years. It is a Walloon adoption agency that is said to have cooperated in child trafficking from Guatemala. The man himself screams his innocence, but Unicef ??has asked him to step aside.

Last Monday, Unicef ??Belgium proudly presented its new general manager. The Malinois Bernard Sintobin (67) temporarily takes over the helm of the organization that defends the rights of children on behalf of the United Nations. However, Unicef ??could now break that decision, because Sintobin appears to be involved in a file about alleged child trafficking.

There is a judicial investigation into a non-profit organization where he was director and treasurer until the end of last year. That has been confirmed by our editors. It concerns the Walloon adoption association "Hacer Puente". He is suspected of having cooperated in child trafficking. Adopted children are said to have been illegally divorced from their biological parents in Guatemala and then given up for adoption to couples in Western countries, including Belgium. The Belgian adoptions went through Hacer Puente. The federal public prosecutor's office received some tips last year and started to dig. The research officially started last month.

Help with administration

Boss Unicef ??steps aside due to "child trafficking"

Bernard Sintobin, the new CEO of Unicef ??Belgium, has to step aside one week after his appointment. He appears in a federal prosecutor's investigation into the trafficking of children from Guatemala. They were allegedly taken away from their parents and then offered as orphans in our country by a Belgian association. The payments went to the sister-in-law of the then dictator in Guatemala.

The 67-year-old Sintobin was appointed last week as CEO of Unicef ??Belgium, the children's rights organization of the United Nations. He started to combine that with his current position as business manager of Wereldmediahuis, the publisher of global magazine MO. In the meantime, however, the man has been discredited for dealing in children from the third world and he has to step aside again. There is a judicial investigation into a non-profit organization in which Sintobin played a prominent role for years. The federal public prosecutor confirms this.

The non-profit organization Hacer Puente organized adoptions of orphans from Guatemala in the late 80s and early 90s. The Bargoens One program recently brought the testimony of two women who suspect they were taken away from their parents as children and brought to Belgium via this non-profit organization. One of them, Coline Fanon, came to Belgium at the age of one and now, almost thirty years later, found her parents back in Guatemala.

Even in 2014, Guatemala was upside down when a Flemish woman, Dolores Maria Preat, discovered that her mother had not given her away from poverty, but that she had been kidnapped. She also came to our country via Hacer Puente. The Guatemalan who had abducted her at the time was sentenced for this a few years ago.

In good news for couples looking to adopt children, the Women Development and Child Welfare (WD&CW) Department has set itself a target of ensuring 1,000 adoptions this year.

Nearly 1,350 applications for adoption are pending in Andhra Pradesh, it is learnt. The move will benefit hundreds of orphans and half-orphans living in Child Care Institutions (CCIs) in the State.

About 32,000 children are living at more than 900 registered CCIs (shelter homes) in Andhra Pradesh.

A few months ago, officials of the WD&CW and the Juvenile Welfare Department conducted special drives on CCIs and identified about 2,700 children, who were fit for adoption, but were staying at shelter homes for the last few years. Unconfirmed reports state that many unregistered homes were illegally operating as children’s homes, without furnishing any information to the government.

“Every year, we are giving about 120 to 150 children for adoption from 14 Sishu Gruhas, also known as Specialised Adoption Agencies (SAAs), run by the WD&CW Department. Now, we want to place the children staying in CCIs, who are legally fit for adoption, under foster care,” said WD&CW Special Commissioner H. Arun Kumar.